I personally don't see anything seriously wrong with how the merit system works ,despite the imperfection, it is doing just fine.
I agree with your opinion that there are no specific rules in terms of getting merit, it depends on the good of someone if someone likes it they provide merit there sometimes there are interesting things about merit here. The merit given in the post is not the same as the merit given on the first or second page in the machine part. Pages are not provided corresponding Merit Merit most cases it works is still unknown.